In November, we partnered with our friends over at Rice Bowls to encourage churches and ministries to help feed orphans through the Red Bowl Challenge. Rice Bowls feeds over 1,500 happy kids in 52 Christian orphanages across the globe. Through the challenge, we were able to provide 5,560 meals for those orphans. That number is about 1 full month of meals for all of the children living in 2 different orphanages.
The last quarter of 2011 was a busy one for Church Plant Media. If you haven't been following our blog, let me catch you up on all of the exciting changes... In October, we lowered our price to $1,000 for any gospel loving ministry. In November, we partnered with Rice Bowls to help feed orphans around the world through the Red Bowl Challenge from Thanksgiving until New Year's Day. Then in December, we released a few new website designs and we completely refreshed our easy-to-use Content Management System. In addition to all of that, each month we also launched a number of new websites on our system.
I love Christmas. It is an annual reminder of the gospel. The good news that God became a man. He took on flesh and dwelt among us. They call Him, "Immanuel, which means, God with us" (Matthew 1:23). Our Creator humbled Himself to be born as one of His creation. He went on to live a sinless life, die a sinner's death, and rise from the dead so that sinful men could become children of God. But just like Charlie Brown, we forget what Christmas is all about. Our default setting is to drop the ball and lose our way.
In the past year we have posted a few updates about an anticipated major release of our easy to use Content Management System (CMS). Well, we have great news as 2011 draws to a close! After over 2,500 combined man hours in the past 18 months, we have planned, designed, coded, tested, beta released and officially launched this brand new update for our partners.
Next week most people in the USA will celebrate by eating turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and squash, pumpkin pie and cylinders of cranberry goodness. We all have much to be thankful for. Which is why we are announcing a special holiday challenge that will give back to those in need, when we have plenty. From Thanksgiving Day until New Year's Day, we are asking everyone we know to team up with the good folks over at Rice Bowls to feed children in 52 orphanages across the globe. But we are not only asking, we are going to reward the biggest giver with a big gift!
We are excited to announce a new album featuring our Senior Developer, Ben Otero (a.k.a. Benjamin the Esquire). The Ephesians Project by ChristCentric is a verse by verse, hip hop commentary on the book of Ephesians. A lyrical combination of sound + doctrine. The album and samples are now available on both the iTunes Store and the Amazon MP3 Store as well as Spotify. Ben is featured on tracks 5, 9, 12, and 13.
Today is a new day. We are now offering all gospel-centered ministries one low fee to set up a Church Plant Media website. This includes churches of any size or age, missionaries, Christian schools, Bible colleges or seminaries, as well as any gospel-loving, para-church ministry. We welcome anyone that has a gospel-centered mission who will uphold our Gospel Agreement. One price point for one purpose: to expand the reach of the gospel via the Internet.
We thank God for the opportunity to serve gospel ministries across the globe. In the past 2 months we have been honored to create website designs for a number of ministries we love and respect in the USA, Canada, the UK, and down-under in Australia. Although we only did the design for their projects, John MacArthur’s team recently launched the new Grace to You and Grace Advance websites. We also partnered with author, blogger, and pastor, Tim Challies on the website for Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Canada. Lastly, we recently launched a website for Steve Chong and Kirkplace in Sydney, Australia. In recent years Steve has been mentored by Mark Driscoll and instructed by John Piper, as he leads the RICE Movement.
Church Plant Media is excited to announce the addition of Jim Cook to our team. Jim has a knack for developing relationships and he has experience working for several technology firms. He is joining our partnership building team to be a Ministry Advocate to larger, gospel ministries. Jim is a graduate of Bob Jones University and currently manages the Human Resources for their School of Business.
Our team at Church Plant Media has been building websites for more than 10 years now. In this decade of service we have come across three consistent misconceptions that pastors believe about the websites they want to build. Each of these misconceptions come from a misunderstanding of what is available on the Internet. We would like to cut through the confusion and put these doubts to rest.